


031 "wet"

by wheel_pen



Series: Iron Man AU [31]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fish out of Water, My Pepper is different, Pre-Iron Man, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 05:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Tony dallies with a new friend in a rainstorm, Pepper is getting wet. And Tony discovers that getting wet makes Pepper scarily helpless and vulnerable, so he has to be the responsible one. “She was about as appealing as a drowned rat right now. Which meant I had suddenly become a rodent-ophile.”</p>
<p>Note: Chapter 2 of this work is a timeline for the whole series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 031 "wet"

**Author's Note:**

> 1) My Pepper is very different from canon Pepper. Her personality/origin is very different; to separate her from canon Pepper I've given her a new last name and a different hair color.
> 
> 2) The bad words are censored. That's just how I do things.
> 
> 3) Stories are numbered in the order I wrote them, which isn't necessarily the order in which they occur. At some point I'll post a timeline.
> 
> I wrote this series after the first Iron Man movie came out. It's very AU but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play with these characters.
> 
> Note: Chapter 2 of this work is a timeline for the whole series.

           The problem with outdoor entertaining in San Francisco is that the rain can come up rather suddenly. And I’m not talking about some piddly five-minute drip before the sun comes out again—we get some serious downpours here, the kind that can soak you clean through in under two minutes. A decent host of an outdoor event, especially a fancy one, will have a space for the guests to run to immediately, someplace large enough to continue the festivities while the tsunami rages. Of course most people are irritated by these cloudbursts, but I kind of like them—nothing helps forge a bond between two total strangers like a see-through-when-wet dress and the need to huddle together for warmth.

            So I was at this garden party—really it was the same as a cocktail party, but a little earlier in the evening and set on someone’s expansive back patio amid large pots of not-very-exotic flowers (seriously, they were whatever kind they put in sidewalk planters downtown). Also guests could wander off further into the grass of the backyard, which had some nice trees and shrubs and bushes. By ‘nice,’ of course, I mean they concealed well but weren’t too prickly or messy. In fact, they were so well-suited to our purpose, the lady I was with and I didn’t even notice that the downpour had begun.

            “Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark!” Somehow Pepper’s voice cut through the pleasant fog of heavy petting.

            “Hey, it’s raining!” observed my new acquaintance. I judged this probably constituted an insightful comment on her part; but, being very open-minded, I was willing to fully embrace those less intelligent than myself.

            I peered through the ribbons of rain soaking us and saw Pepper pushing through some bushes towards us. I was immediately glad I had persuaded her to try that suspicious section of the color wheel known as ‘pastels,’ as her light blue dress was marvelously transparent when wet. However, I also realized I had neglected to explain to her the concept of wearing light-colored underwear beneath light-colored clothing.

            “Pepper! Have you come to join us?” I asked hopefully, putting my arm around her. The marginal shelter offered by the tree we were next to encompassed only a small space and I wanted to make sure Pepper got to share it. “Pepper, this is Aliza. This is Pepper, my assistant.”

            “Didn’t know you needed an assistant with this,” Aliza purred, drawing me back into her embrace. Ooh, guess I could bump up her IQ a _few_ points. Sometimes sassy could be fun.

            “Mr. Stark,” Pepper persisted, regaining my attention. And don’t think that making out with a hot woman while Pepper was also under my arm was in any way unpleasant, at least for me. “Mr. Stark, it’s raining!”

            “We’ve already covered that, Pepper, thanks,” I told her as soon as my mouth was free. “Listen, not to be rude, but if you’re not gonna, you know, assist right now, maybe you could scoot on back to the—“ Don’t think I got all those words out without considerable pauses and unrelated interjections—Aliza was not being idle.

            “It’s not safe for you to stand out in the rain, sir,” Pepper insisted. “You may be struck by lightning.”

            “That’s what I’m hoping for, Pep,” I assured her, releasing her from my embrace. It didn’t seem like she was too interested in playing along anyway.

            “The stress of maintaining an adequate internal body temperature in this cold, damp environment may make you susceptible to illness!”

            I had to, regretfully, pause Aliza for a moment in order to process what Pepper was saying. “You’re not going away until we come in, are you?” I surmised. Pepper shook her head, sending small drops of water flying off her squashed hairdo. I sighed and took Aliza’s hand. “Well, come on, let’s go back to the house.” The lady expressed her disappointment with this plan as we crossed the backyard with Pepper in tow. “Don’t worry. We’ll just say good-bye to the hostess and head back to my place. If that’s okay with you, of course.” Aliza indicated this was really extremely okay with her.

            “Sir, you’re still in the rain,” Pepper prompted, spurring us on again.

            “Pepper, how can you possibly hate the rain so much?” I demanded as we reached the patio. “Doesn’t it make you feel kind of, I don’t know, happy and alive and free and at one with the power of nature?”

            “That’s _so_ romantic,” Aliza cooed.

            “I don’t like getting wet,” Pepper answered peevishly. “It’s messy.”

            “Lots of fun things in life are messy, Pepper,” I told her impishly. Aliza giggled appreciatively.

            “Like what?” Pepper asked, as she clearly couldn’t think of any.

            I rolled my eyes. “Okay, the _point_ of an innuendo, Pepper, is that it doesn’t need to be explained,” I tried to tell her. “If you explain, the humor is lost.”

            “I’m sorry, sir,” Pepper replied, with what I felt was more than a touch of insincerity. “I didn’t realize you were trying to be funny.”

            I stopped just under the edge of the awning, forcing Pepper to dodge around me sideways if she wanted to get out of the rain. The party had relocated inside the host’s spacious house—I could see through the large windows that the novelty of getting drenched in their designer dresses and tuxes had not yet worn off, as people were still laughing and wringing out pieces of clothing onto the tile floor.

            “Are you slippery when wet?” I asked Aliza, putting my arms around her again.

            “You’ll just have to find out,” she teased promisingly. I grinned at the thought of doing just that.

            “Pepper, tell Happy to bring the car around,” I instructed, slightly distracted. “Give your car keys to Pepper,” I then suggested to Aliza. “She’ll make sure your car is waiting for you at my place in the morning.” Now I personally would never hand over my car keys to a total stranger. Um, unless they happened to be a valet. Luckily some people are more trusting than that, and no doubt they lead more convenient lives.

            Aliza chucked her car keys in Pepper’s general direction, then the two of us ran off to say a rapid goodnight to the host before making a dash for the chauffeured car, leaving Pepper behind at the party. Three’s a crowd, you know, at least when one of them is sitting off to the side writing emails for work. I’m not _that_ kinky, after all. But don’t feel too bad for Pepper—this was a pretty standard routine for us. She quite often accompanied me to functions that had some kind of business networking opportunity, then did the networking while I looked for opportunities. And she certainly never accompanied me back home when I had found said opportunity—we live in a civilized part of the world, after all, there are cabs _everywhere_. Or sometimes Happy went back for her, if he judged I wasn’t going to need him any time soon. But allowing her to ride up front with him would just have been weird, I think, even if she _was_ on the other side of a barrier.

            So we left without Pepper and proceeded back to my place. I’m trying to avoid falling into NC-17 territory here so I’ll skip over what we did next, but I bet you can guess. Allow me merely to say that it was suitably diverting.

            Around midnight I got hungry for a snack of a different sort. Aliza was a little sleepy at that point (it’s so annoying when you discover a woman looks hot because she doesn’t eat, _not_ because she works out and has a decent level of endurance) so I grabbed some sweatpants and a t-shirt (bit chilly otherwise) and padded downstairs to the kitchen. I am not creeped out by dark houses, especially not my own. But the utter silence, the emptiness of the whole vast mansion filled with rooms that were filled with nothing, was a little unnerving. I decided to take a detour and see if Pepper had made it home yet.

            The light was on under her door as I approached her room. The light was often on, I had noticed—Pepper didn’t seem to sleep very much. Or maybe she just timed her sleep to when it was obvious I wouldn’t need her. That thought made me feel better—I wanted to talk to her now, so clearly she would be awake and alert.

            I knocked on her door. There was no answer, but I gave it a few seconds. I hated how in the movies people always answered the door instantaneously, like they’d been standing beside it waiting for someone to knock. Even people who lived in tiny apartments that would fit into my bathroom might occasionally have to put down their food or flush or something before getting the door.

            I thought about this as I stood outside her door, trying to be patient, which was not generally one of my strong suits. I knocked again. “Yo, Pep! Are you decent?” Maybe she was in the shower. With that thought in mind, I opened her door right away.

            The bathroom was dark. The bed was covered in papers she was organizing. There was no one at the computer desk. Maybe she was somewhere else in the house…?

            Suddenly a movement in the corner caught my eye. “Pepper?”

            “M-Mr. St-Stark,” Pepper answered, stuttering slightly.

            I frowned and moved closer, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. It wasn’t that it was _so_ bizarre, just—confusing. Pepper appeared to be sitting on the floor, knees drawn up under her chin, leaning against the wall, a towel wrapped tightly around her. Her hair was still wet. And she was shivering.

            I dropped down to the floor next to her. “Pepper, are you okay? What are you doing?” I put my hand against her cheek, as she often did for me, and her skin was ice cold. Whatever distractions had been fogging my brain were instantly swept away. “Pepper, I’m going to call a doctor.”

            “N-no!” she insisted, clutching my arm with a grip like steel.

            “Honey, you’ve got—I don’t know, hypothermia or something—“

            “I don’t like getting wet,” she repeated, not entirely focused on what was happening.

            I had to be, though, because Pepper was sick. She needed my help. “Okay. Hold on.” I hurried to her small bathroom and flipped the shower on. “Now come on.” It was a struggle to pull her to her feet, she was shivering so hard—I feared she would shake out of my arms when I carried her. “We’re gonna get you warm, honey,” I promised, hoping this wasn’t one of those situations where the most obvious solution actually just made things worse.

            I stood her in the middle of the bathroom and yanked away the towel she was clinging to, then stripped the still-transparent dress off over her head. “J---s, Pepper, how long were you out in the rain? How can you still be wet? Don’t you have enough sense to change out of wet clothes?” Well, obviously not. “Take your shoes off.” She kicked them aside. “Now get in the shower.”

            “I don’t like getting wet,” she protested dully, so I picked her up and shoved her under the water.

            “You take _showers_ , Pepper,” I insisted as she made unhappy noises. “I know, I’ve seen you!” Hey, if she could brief me about a meeting while _I_ was in the shower, I could certainly shave while she washed her hair and briefed me about a meeting. We were all about the multitasking.

            I turned the water down a little bit because I didn’t want to burn her. As soon as I let go of her Pepper crouched at the bottom of the shower, trying to avoid the direct spray of water. She was wearing only her black bra, underwear, and jewelry at that point, with her make-up (such as it was) smearing off. Let’s just say that for many reasons, she didn’t have to worry about me trying to jump her at the moment, with probably the _least_ of them being that she looked like an heiress on a three-day bender. But also—I was just freaked out. Pepper _never_ got sick, or tired, or upset. Or drunk. _She_ always took care of _me_ in those situations. To see her so, apparently, helpless and undone was just—

            Not something I really had time to dwell on at the moment. “You stay in there,” I ordered her. “I’m going to get you something hot to drink.”

            I sprinted back to the kitchen, going over hot beverage options in my head. Tea would be easiest. I found a mug, filled it with water, and put it in the microwave for… well, I had no idea what the proper time was, but one minute seemed pretty short. Also that would give me a little time to find the tea bags.

            Well, Pepper wasn’t going to approve of the state of the kitchen later, but that was hardly a serious concern. I grabbed the mug from the microwave and dropped a tea bag in a random flavor into it. It occurred to me I could’ve just made her drink hot water, but people in the movies never did that, and honestly, that was all I had to go by. I was about to head back to the bedroom when for some reason, the thought of _food_ popped into my head. Not for _me_ , although I had originally come down for that; but for Pepper. I wondered if this was another example of our telepathic communication power that Rhodey scoffed at so much—I mean, surely I would never have noticed whether or not Pepper had eaten recently on my own.

            I opened a cabinet and grabbed the first edible thing I saw, which happened to be a container of honey. Perfect. I even thought to grab a spoon. Some people seemed to think I always lost my head in a crisis, which was just ridiculous—I was usually very good in the actual crisis, then freaked out _afterwards_.

            I brought the mug of tea, the honey, and the spoon back to Pepper’s room and set them on the table beside her bed. Then I stuck my head in the bathroom to check on her—she was still in the same position in the shower, but her shivering had noticeably decreased. “You feeling better?” I asked, kneeling on the floor at eye level.

            She nodded. Her eyes seemed more focused. “I feel much—“ She frowned.

            “Warmer?” I guessed hopefully. “You were pretty cold a couple minutes ago. Seriously, Pepper, you gotta take better care of yourself than that. You could have caught your death of cold back there. Or, er, let pathogens invade your compromised immune system. Or whatever the h—l you said to me earlier.”

            She smiled faintly. “I suppose that is a risk, sir,” she agreed. “Am I done in here?”

            “I guess. Do you have a bathrobe or warm pajamas or sweatpants or…?” She was shaking her heard at all my suggestions. “Pepper, you need some casual clothes,” I judged. “Seriously, we’re going shopping soon.”

            I stood and opened the linen closet—the woman didn’t even have decent towels, by which I meant beach-towel-sized water-absorbing blankets. I grabbed a couple anyway and turned off the water. “Okay, you come on out, and I’ll get you started drying off, then I’m going to run upstairs for something warm you can wear.”

            Slowly Pepper stood and stepped awkwardly out of the shower onto the bathmat. I tried to think of what she was wearing as a modest bikini instead of underwear and quickly wrapped a towel around her shoulders. “This is how I started,” she pointed out.

            I cranked the bathroom heater so it blew out hot air on us. “Wrong,” I corrected, a bit sharply, lifting the towel so it caught her wet hair and twisting it around her head. The second towel I allowed her to keep over her shoulders. “ _You_ started by huddling in a cold room in wet clothes, which is an excellent way to get _sick_ , not warm.” I felt this point was important enough to repeat several times. “Now you stand here and I will be right back.” I saw the tea on the way out, grabbed it, and thrust it back into the bathroom. “Drink this. And don’t move.”

            I jogged out of her room and back upstairs, not trusting her to do as I said for very long. I almost switched the light in my bedroom on, then remembered I had a guest who didn’t really need to get involved in what was going on. So I tried to be relatively stealthy as I went to my closet and started looking for something Pepper could wear.

            “Um… hello?” came a voice from the bed. I wondered if she had forgotten my name—not that I took it personally, it was the middle of the night, after all. Besides, I had forgotten hers.

            “Just me,” I assured her cheerfully. “Go back to sleep.” I grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt and headed for the door.

            “What’s going on?” the lady persisted sleepily.

            “Nothing,” I promised. “But as soon as I get back there will be _plenty_ going on! Sleep now while you can.”

            I hurried back downstairs and found Pepper approximately where I had left her. The tea had been drunk, her dress was dripping over the shower curtain rod, and she was carefully removing both her jewelry and her make-up. “Feeling better, I guess,” I surmised.

            “Almost,” she decided, putting her necklace in a little basket by the sink. “I have to get cleaned up first.”

            “Okay.” I put the clothes on the counter. “Take off what you’re wearing and put those on instead,” I instructed. “Come out whenever you’re ready.” I shut the door before she could protest the casual, too-big sweatsuit—or start removing what she was currently wearing. Now that the crisis seemed to be over, it was slightly more difficult for me to ignore the whole scantily-clad thing.

            Nonetheless, I tried. I examined the bed with its piles of papers and decided that Pepper had had enough trials that evening, I didn’t need to add ‘ruined organizational attempt’ to them. So I started very carefully gathering up the various memos, spreadsheets, diagrams, and reports, turning the piles at different angles as I stacked them, trying to pick them up in a logical order. I put a lot of effort into it, I want you to know.

            For about thirty seconds anyway. Then I got a papercut—those really _hurt_ , you know? And why was Pepper handling so much paper, anyway—this was supposed to be the modern, digital age, after all. And it was taking way too d—n long to keep stuff neat. And, Pepper would probably enjoy sorting them again, on some level anyway. So I lumped all the rest of the pages together and dumped them on her desk.

            Finally I was able to pull back the blankets on the bed—they were so stiff I thought they’d never been used. Pepper must have just gotten them recently. I piled some pillows against the headboard and tried to determine what exactly my strategy was going to be here—what I could reasonably allow myself to do without resulting in an embarrassing situation, not that Pepper would notice it, and what’s-her-name upstairs would probably appreciate being the recipient of my discomfort. Sorry to keep hitting the same note here, but it was something I had learned to think about well in advance where Pepper was concerned.

            After a few moments, the bathroom door opened and Pepper emerged. She looked very unhappy in the sweatsuit—she could have worn the top alone and looked perfectly respectable, at least as far as length went, and she had to hold the pants up with one hand that was constantly being covered by the sleeve. She’d washed her face and brushed out her still-damp hair, at least. She frowned at me when she saw me looking her over and I really, really wanted to laugh.

            “I don’t like this,” she protested flatly.

            I slid my hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled around it, trying to stifle my giggles. I cleared my throat. “Sorry, Pep, but you haven’t got anything else. And why is your hair still wet? Don’t you have a hair dryer?”

            “I didn’t _clean_ it,” she answered, a touch petulant.

            “Your hair dryer?” I asked in confusion.

            “My _hair_ ,” she clarified with ill humor. “It got wet but I didn’t cleanse it. If I blow dry it, it will look funny.”

            Restraint was my specialty tonight, because I did not respond to that oh-so-tempting comment—say, with a pithy, ‘too late!’ Instead I tried to be serious. “Okay. Let’s just get into bed.” She raised her eyebrows at me, as well she might. “Oh, please,” I scoffed, settling into her bed against the pillows. “This is strictly for therapeutic purposes, Pepper. You’re about as appealing as a drowned rat right now.” Which meant I had suddenly become a rodent-ophile. “Come here.”

            She started to comply. Then she saw what I had left on the nightstand. “Oh, honey!” She reached for the container eagerly, forgetting the need to hold her pants up, and nearly fell face-first onto the bed while also flashing me as the sweatpants tangled around her feet. Note I said ‘nearly.’ Fortunately my quick intervention saved the day.

            “That’s what you get for being greedy, Pepper,” I told her sternly as she composed herself.

            “I’m hungry.”

            “I know. Get into bed and I’ll _give_ you the honey.” Finally seeing the wisdom in my plan—or maybe she was just getting tired of protesting—Pepper climbed into bed as directed and leaned back against my chest. Her wet hair whipped me in the face as she settled in and I didn’t think it was an accident. I pulled the covers up without complaint, however, and tucked them in around us. She was now snugly situated between my legs, with my arms tightly wrapped around her, undoubtedly able to feel my breath on her neck. There were a lot of women in the world who would love to be in her position right now.

            But Pepper always did have a one-track mind. “Where my honey?” she demanded, non-euphemistically.

            I sighed and reached over to the side table. “Here’s your d—n honey,” I replied, handing her the container and the spoon. Focusing on my irritation helped me not to focus on other things, like Pepper being snugly situated between my legs with my arms tightly wrapped around her and her neck close enough for me to just lean down and—No, no, irritated, remember? At the very least, serious. “You really kind of scared me there, Pepper,” I admitted, rubbing her shoulders as she consumed the honey quickly. “I mean, you were really cold. And you were shivering so hard…”

            She twisted around to look at me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark,” she said with sincerity. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

            “Well, you did,” I reiterated, for lack of anything else sensible to say. The situation reminded me far too much of a romance novel staple, the scene where the heroine falls into an icy river or lake and the hero fishes her out, then decides that the only way to revive her is to take off all their clothes and rely on body heat. After which they end up making love, usually all the more poignant for the life-saving act just performed.

            Hmm. You know, that was probably _just_ the sort of thing I _shouldn’t_ be thinking about right now. At all.

            “So, er, what happened, anyway?” I asked, speaking to fill the silence more than anything. Silence led to too much thinking. “At the party, I mean. How did you get home?”

            “I took a cab,” Pepper answered, still stuffing herself with honey. She was going to need another shower when she was done. Ooh, bad thought. I squirmed a little behind her. “I returned home not long after you and your guest did.”

            “Oh, hey, speaking of my guest, Pep,” I remarked, having momentarily forgotten there was anyone else in the house, “do you happen to remember, er, her—“

            “Aliza.”

            “Oh, right, of course, Aliza.” I tried to store that firmly in my brain—only the short-term memory, though. Wouldn’t need it longer than that. “Wait. That was _hours_ ago, Pepper,” I pointed out with a frown. “Are you telling me you were just down here, shivering—“ While I was upstairs—

            “I don’t like getting wet,” she said for the fifteenth time. _That_ was definitely going in the long-term memory. “It wasn’t like taking a shower. I was very cold. I didn’t know what to do.”

            “J---s H. C----t, Pepper!” I exclaimed. “Learn some f-----g life skills, already! Next time you don’t feel good, just come and get me, for G-d’s sake.” Honestly—my confidence in Pepper’s chances of survival in this world were severely shaken, if she didn’t even know to ask for help when she didn’t know what to do.

            She looked at me over her shoulder again. I think she may have been surprised. “But you were busy,” she pointed out. “You had a guest.”

            “Pepper, I’m a genius, and I couldn’t even remember her _name_ ,” I reminded her. “That should tell you how little she registers on my consciousness. Now don’t get any ideas about interrupting me to say a light bulb’s burned out or something stupid like that, but if you’re _sick_ or hurt or whatever, what do I care if my guest has to go home unfulfilled? She’s just the flavor of the day.” You’re everything else.

            Pepper smiled at me. “Thank you, sir. I’ll remember that in the future.”

            “Well, good.” I tightened my arms around her, imagining her curled up on the floor in the dark, barely able to grab a towel to keep warm. “Haven’t you ever been caught in the rain before?” I asked her. “Surely you have. And in a colder climate.”

            “I was never in the rain for an extended period of time,” Pepper answered neutrally. That is, the length of time it took to find her errant boss and follow him back to shelter. “I didn’t realize its effect would be so debilitating.”

            Of course, Aliza and I had been in the rain for the same amount of time and suffered no ill effects, but that hardly mattered; Pepper was special, as evidenced by the nearly empty container of honey she was still picking at. “Well, now you know what to do if it happens again.” Come get _me_. Knowing Pepper she would try to microwave herself next time, if left to her own devices. Better safe than sorry.

            “Yes, sir,” she assured me. “I’m done eating. Thank you.”

            “No problem.” I took the slightly sticky container and spoon from her and set them back on the table. “I could hardly ignore your little telepathic suggestion.” She gave no sign that she had heard that remark—neither confirm nor deny seemed to be her motto, at least regarding our psychic connection.

            Pepper leaned back against me and we sat in companionable silence for a few moments. I couldn’t sit still for very long, after all, and after I realized that Pepper wasn’t shivering anymore I started to question the necessity of my presence here. “Why don’t we lie down, and I’ll stay here until you fall asleep?” I offered.

            “Thank you, but I’m not really tired,” Pepper told me. “I’ll probably do some work for a little while.” Her voice took a tiny pointed tone. “I have some papers I need to organize.”

            “You’re just lucky I didn’t fling them off the bed onto the floor,” I told her. Some people just weren’t good at gratitude. “Anyway, you shouldn’t be working, you should be sleeping. You had a near-death experience today. You might still get sick from it.”

            “I think your swift actions saved the day, sir.”

            For a second I was hurt—I immediately thought of how my actions hadn’t been swift at all, except for the part where I dumped Pepper in the rain, since it had taken hours for me to come and check on her. I thought she was taking a shot at me for that. But then I realized that Pepper didn’t think that way—yes, she could be sarcastic, she could be chiding, she could even unleash the shamer’s eyes on me, but that was never simply to be mean. It was hardly even ever about _herself_ but rather about me not taking care of myself or being irresponsible or something. Pepper didn’t play little sniping mind games. If her comment was disingenuous at all, it was probably just mildly mocking of my own sense of self-importance and the drama I had attributed to the situation.

            And that was probably the first time I had ever been in bed with a beautiful woman in my arms and spent a good two minutes overanalyzing a comment, rather than the beautiful woman. Granted, this particular beautiful woman was about as unattainable as they came, for all the casual contact and bathroom sharing we engaged in.

            And with that thought it was really time for me to go. “You’re sure you feel better?” I prompted Pepper. “I can stay if you want.”

            “I don’t think that’s necessary,” she told me again. “I feel much better. I think I’ll do some work, maybe have a snack.” This from the woman who had just gobbled down a whole tube of honey.

            “Well, okay. If you’re sure.” I climbed out of the bed, the tiniest bit disappointed that she hadn’t accepted my offer to stay. I mean, it would have been h—l lying there next to her innocently, but… a pleasant kind of h—l. An accomplishment of epic proportions if I had succeeded. Something nice I could do for her.

            But it was not to be tonight. Surely there would come another opportunity, given Pepper’s distinct lack of common sense. I was almost halfway down the hall when I decided to backtrack and stuck my head into Pepper’s room again, where she was out of bed and attempting to wrangle the too-large sweatpants with a belt. “Hey, Pep, what was—“

            “Aliza,” she replied patiently.

            “Aliza, Aliza, Aliza,” I muttered to myself, heading back upstairs. “Aliza, are you awake? I hope you got enough sleep for the night!”

* * *


	2. Timeline for Iron Man AU Series

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Timeline for my series, Iron Man AU

**BEFORE**

_Pre-Pepper_

  * 042 “young engineer”           Tony age ~7
  * 029a “death”                          Tony age 17



_First year working for Tony_

  * 001 "introduction"                  first hired
  * 009 "cancel"                            two to four weeks (estimated)
  * 026a “Pepper’s origins”          four to six weeks (estimated); after 009
  * 036 “sparkly”                           two months
  * 026b “Pepper’s origins”         four to five months (three to four months after 026a)
  * 041 “secret Santa”                  Christmas
  * 033 “casual day”                     a few months
  * 014 "Japanese steakhouse"    late (yr estimated)



_One to two years working for Tony (estimated)_

  * 005 "romance novels"
  * 012 "surprise party"                after 005
  * 016 "motorcycle"
  * 023 "awesome"



_Second year working for Tony_

  * 018c "Xmas: Pepper's tree"     Christmas
  * 002 "live here"                          late
  * 039 “Jarvis”



_Third year working for Tony_

  * 010 "movie"                              (estimated)
  * 017 "picnic"                               summer (yr estimated)
  * 031 “wet”
  * 043 “pool party”                        summer
  * 029b “death”
  * 018a "Xmas: David Bowie"       Christmas (yr estimated)
  * 006 "Pepper's date"                  late (yr estimated)



_Three to four years working for Tony (estimated)_

  * 003 "climbing"



_Fourth year working for Tony_

  * 007 "autistic"                            (estimated)
  * 013 "flirting"                            (estimated)
  * 040 “bearskin”
  * 035 “skateboarding”
  * 020b "Joe"                                after 013 (yr estimated)
  * 022 "Rae's date"                      Christmas (yr estimated)



_Fifth year working for Tony_

  * 011 "Bettie Page"                     after 007 (yr estimated)
  * 019 "our song"                       (estimated)
  * 021 "wedding"                         after 020b; April-June (yr estimated)
  * 034 “Vegas”
  * 037 “robot zoo”



_Sixth year working for Tony_

  * 004 "accident/arrest"             (estimated)
  * 018b "Xmas: quit"                   Christmas (yr estimated)
  * 025 “Berlin”                             (estimated)



_Seventh year working for Tony_

  * 020a "red dress"                     (estimated)
  * 024 "forget"                             Christmas (yr estimated)
  * 008 "robotics department"     one month Before



**AFTER**

_3 months_

  * Tony escapes from captivity



_6 months_

  * Tony debuts the Iron Man suit



_9-10 months (estimated)_

  * 015 "trans-dimensional"



_1-2 years (estimated)_

  * 026c “Pepper’s origins”
  * 028 “Mama’s boy”
  * 032 “young”
  * 038 “Avengers”



_Marriage track_

  * 027 “proposal”
  * 030 “baby talk”                        married
  * 046 "expecting"                       pregnancy announcement
  * 044 "blueberry yogurt"           pregnant
  * 045 "meeting baby"                 after baby's birth




End file.
